


And by opposing end them (or Five things that never happened to Max Miller & Sam Winchester)

by Hope



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe, Gen, minor characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-12
Updated: 2006-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/41419.html</p></blockquote>





	And by opposing end them (or Five things that never happened to Max Miller & Sam Winchester)

*

**1\. **

The first time is when Sam's driving forward into the milky dawn, and that doesn't make sense, because restless spirits are meant to emerge at night, when there's no light to shine through them and they can cast shadows of their own, but there he is. Sam does a double-take at the rearview, and Max's mouth curls up into a smirk that's nothing like Dean's good-natured ribbing. "Take me home?" Max says, and then Dean's awake and shouting because Sam's just swerved his precious Impala into a ditch.

"Dude," Dean's tone can't decide whether it wants to sound wounded or incredulous. "The fuck?"

"Sorry," Sam says, breathing quick and shallow, gripping the wheel fierce enough to hide the shaking, and Dean shoves at his shoulder, hard; though not before giving Sam the once-over and obviously deciding reprimand more than rescue is in order. Sam doesn't examine his relief too closely.

"Next time you decide to fall asleep at the wheel, wake me up first." The door protests loudly as Dean shoves it open, and Sam slides across the seat rather than getting out as Dean walks slowly 'round the front of the car, shaking his head slowly as he gets to where the front bumper's sliced into the turf.

"Well you're awake, aren't you?" It's a weak comeback, and they both know it, but apparently Dean thinks Sam's suffering enough because he doesn't run with it, just pulls the driver's side door closed and gunning the engine again.

"Just get some sleep, kiddo," he says, and Sam squeezes his eyes closed tight.

*

The second time makes more sense; Sam clambering out of the shower bone-weary and skin scrubbed clean of grave dirt and lighter fluid and it's cold enough that the condensation on the mirror is already patching away, revealing more solid colour than Sam's bare skin really ought to have.

He grips the edge of the basin and closes his eyes, forces himself to breathe slow and steady. When he looks up again the mirror's cleared further. The bathroom's empty behind him when he turns to look; Max still hasn't broken eye contact when he turns back.

"I thought it was meant to be the other way 'round," Sam says, half-whisper, mindful of Dean only a paper-thin wall away. "Shouldn't I be able to see you everywhere _but_ the mirror?"

Max's mouth curls a little, but not much; mostly he just looks sad. Not _vengeful_ or anything, and that doesn't make sense either. "Not meant to make sense," Max says, in that same somber, matter-of-fact tone that's been stuck in Sam's head for days now. "There's a lot that you don't know."

The door rattles and Sam's head whips round.

"Dude," Dean's voice is barely muffled. "Quit jerking off; some of us have more important things to clean."

He's alone in the mirror when he turns back, retort coming automatically. "Coming!"

*

He's urged awake more by the abrupt cold than by the non-movement of the car; opens his eyes to find they're stopped in some generic gas station in the middle of who-knows-where, and there's a print of Sam's cheek and nose in the window, stenciled by the condensation left by his breath. Max's sitting next to him, legs falling on either side of the gearbox and hands wedged tightly under his arms. His eyes and mouth look raw, moist, and he stares out of the windscreen somewhat balefully.

"What are you doing here?" Sam asks softly, keeping an eye on Dean, 'grocery shopping' in the convenience store, while taking in as much as he can of Max before he disappears again. Max looks… alive. Like he did last time Sam saw him, when he still had a face and an intact skull.

Max licks his lips, gives his head a slight shake. "You tell me," he half-laughs, the sound completely lacking anything resembling amusement. "You're the know-it-all on the subject." The angles of his arms shift a little as he presses them closer to his chest. "I just wanted it to be over."

The abrupt tightness in Sam's chest helps him stop the automatic words rising up and out. _Me too._

Dean shoves out of the store, arms full of plastic-wrapped saturated fats, and makes a beeline for the car. Max turns his head to look at Sam. "What kind of life is this, man?" he says, and Sam feels fiercely defensive, on the edge of saying something but for the half-desperate tremor in Max's voice. Sam leans around him as Dean gets closer, careful not to touch though the cold of Max's form comes off him in waves this close, pushing open the door for Dean to slide in with hands full.

"Thanks," Dean says, settling in and tossing Sam a bag of chips. Max sits between them for five miles out of the gas station, then Dean reaches forward with greasy fingers to twist on the stereo, and he's gone.

*

Sam wakes up gasping, and the light in the tiny motel room is rank, stagnant. Max is a darker shape whose edges get fuzzier after the lamp flicks on. "Don't," Sam says, sharp pain stabbing into his eyes and the image of Dean's mouth-open brow-frowning sleeping form imprinting into his retinas after he's leaned over to twist it off again.

Max makes an exasperated noise. "Why _bother_," he says, and the lamp clicks on again.

"I said _don't_," Sam's voice dangerously louder, now, and he holds the switch between his fingers after turning it off; though his eyes have adjusted enough now that the room seems prohibitively darker without its gentle glow. As soon as he takes his hand away it flicks on again.

"Mmffb," Dean whuffs, and Sam glares at Max before watching Dean stirring, breath held as if the slightest noise could tip him over from sleep to wakefulness, now. Dean flops his arm from above his head to his side, then half-shoves himself up. "What. Sam," he mumbles, and half his face looks like it's suffered nerve damage from being pressed into the pillow.

"Nothing," Sam whispers, the only other sound Dean's sleep-heavy breathing, as if the struggle to awareness is physically taxing.

"Tell him," Max says, and Sam has to clench his teeth to force back the urge to shush him.

"I just need to use the bathroom. Go back to sleep."

Dean flops back to the bed as if all his limbs are useless. _So much for finely-honed reflexes,_ Sam thinks, then he's holding his breath again as Dean mutters something into the pillow, "Can't you do it in the goddamn dark?" and his breath evens out again.

Max is in the bathroom when Sam closes the door behind, and the light in here's colder, whiter; it makes Max's skin look almost green. The water's like oil slick on Sam's face, cold and repellant, and Max's expression in the mirror is bordering on disgust.

"God," Max says, mouth twisting around his words bitterly. "You call yourselves hunters and you can't even use your own weapons--"

"Just--stop."

"You don't need a damn vengeful rampage to do it. Just _do it_ already. Why the hell _aren't_ you?"

_It gives me a killer headache_ sound like as pissy an excuse as Sam's ever heard, but he _is_ feeling pretty damn pissy right now. "I don't _want_ to," he says, mainly just to be a brat, and Max makes a scoffing sound.

"That's bullshit, it's fucking bullshit." And he's pacing now, dragging Sam's eyes back and forward as he smears across the mirror's reflection. "You're just fucking scared, and that's fucking bullshit, Sam, if you can fucking _preach_ at me to trust you and to not be afraid and you can't even fucking help yourself, let alone anyone else--"

"_Don't_," Sam says again, and there's nothing quiet about it this time, nothing quiet about the sharp crack as the mirror's splintered abruptly, spider-webbed cracks and Max's savage grin not fractured by them.

"Look at us," Max whispers it not as if he's trying to keep the noise down, but as if his words require reverence. There seems to be a million Sams in the fragments of the mirror, but only one Max. "Max. Sam. Even our names are reflections of each other."

"We're the _opposite_ of each other," Sam says vehemently, and Max almost rolls his eyes.

"Don't be stupid. Reflections aren't the opposite of reality, they're just a little bit different. They're wrong, anyway," His eyes meet Sam's in the mirror. "That's why you always look so weird in photos; you're used to seeing a reversed image of yourself."

"Sam," there's nothing sleepy about Dean's voice, and Sam's head hurts but not to the extent that he's dumb enough to not come out of the bathroom before Dean can break his way in. He slams the door behind him, walks right past where Dean's poised halfway between bed and bathroom, slumps to his bed. "You wanna tell me what's going on?" Dean's tone makes it barely a question.

Sam rolls over, rolls away. "No," he says.

"You're not going all crazy on me, are you?"

Dean's voice is closer, but Sam wants to turn around less, now. "Sleeping," he says, makes the word a warning, but it's a few minutes longer before he hears the sounds of Dean climbing back into his own bed again.

*

"Michigan," Max says, and Sam's gaze slip-slides over the map aimlessly. "Jacksonville."

"Jacksonville," he says to Dean. "Michigan."

"_Michigan_?" Dean glances from the road to Sam's face, expression incredulous in the brief moment before it flicks back.

"North," Max says, and slouches back from where he was resting his elbows on the back of the front seat.

"What is it? You see something in the paper?"

Sam twitches his shoulders, turning the involuntary discomfort-spasm into a shrug. "Something," he says, and Dean turns to look at him again, leaving it a bit longer before he turns back to the road.

"You know," Dean says, his voice steady and low. "I can't exactly help if you don't tell me what the hell is going on."

"I don't _need_ help," he says it between his teeth, unable to stop himself directing it partially to the back seat. Dean frowns and glances into the rear mirror.

"Right," Dean says. "Sometimes I wonder."

"Don't," Sam says, and Max says,

"Just do it already,"

and Sam grits his teeth and the map crumples slowly between his loosely cupped hands, the soft, sharp-edged sound of it cutting into his skull.

*

They drive until Dean can't drive anymore and refuses to let Sam take the wheel; and at that point they're in the middle of nowhere, no streetlights and ice frosting the mud on the roadside, cracking under the slowing tires as Dean pulls over. Sam stretches out in the back and Dean takes the front, his compact frame wrapped tighter with his collar up and jacket pulled tight across his chest and it's fucking _cold_ but Sam drops off quicker than he thought possible; doesn't even realize he has until he opens his eyes and looks up and there's Max standing just outside the door, peering in the window, eyes black and mouth dark in the pale moonlight.

It'd been cold in the car but it's humid in comparison to the crispness outside, like the night sky's done some kind of vacuum job on any heat there was, ever, and now the air's cutting harsh into Sam's lungs. He follows Max past the icy crusts of muddy tire tracks, through the tufted turf and into where the grass is more even, ankle-deep, then over a slumping fence and into a stubbled field.

"Now," Max says, stopping and facing him finally. Sam's eyes feel huge, taking in every detail around them that's painted intricately by the pale light.

"What are we," he says, sarcastic tone foiled by the inevitable cold-shudder. "Cow-tipping?"

"Do it now," Max says, and wraps his arms around his chest as if he's feeling the cold as much as Sam is. "You have to," and it's the edge of desperation in his tone that pushes Sam, not for the first time.

"What?" he says, voice softer, and Max knows what he's asking this time, turning his head and nodding to a place a few yards to Sam's right. Sam follows the nod, peers. "_That_?" it's a bathtub, enamel stained and base caked with rust, half-buried and full of water; and man-made convenience for livestock. "Can't I start with something smaller?"

Max almost looks amused. "You moved the sideboard. Do you have any idea how many below-minimum-wage jockeys my dad paid to haul that in from the old country? Besides," he licks his lips. "It doesn't matter how big it is, just--"

"I know," Sam says, "_do it_," and he concentrates, concentrates on the knife blade edging its way inwards from the base of his skull, but it's a familiar pain now, something he can take hold of and control how hard and where it cuts.

*

When the dawn comes it makes moisture out of the ice around them, rises up hesitantly until Sam's practically immersed in it where he's sitting on the wet ground, sweat rising up off his body as steam.

"Come back to the car," Dean says from behind him, and adds once Sam's standing, "All of you," almost as an afterthought, then "both of you?" when Sam looks at him askance.

He doesn't ask any more questions until it's mid-afternoon and they've stopped at the cheapest motel they've seen in 200 miles and Sam collapses on one of the single beds bonelessly.

"So," Dean says then, as if making casual conversation. "Patricia Arquette?"

"More like," Sam half-scowls, "Haley Joel."

Dean smirks, the motherfucker, not even fazed, of course. "Too bad," he says. "I know which one I'd prefer."

"Dude, shut_up_," Sam says, and throws a pillow at him for good measure, without actually lifting a hand.

Dean stands still, not flinching as the pillow hits him, not moving as it slumps to the floor at his feet. He frowns, and Sam forces himself not to chew his lip.

"So," Dean says slowly. "Does this mean you can do that mind control shit? Take over my body and all that?"

"No," Sam says. "At least I don't think so." He bites the edges of his tongue. "People are harder, I think."

"Oh," Dean says, as if he's thinking very hard on it, one hand on his hip and the other pressing fingers through the hair at the base of his skull. "Good." And before Sam can blink, he's pounced.

Several minutes later, when Sam's on the floor, Dean reclines back onto the headboard and surveys his field of victory. "Is it the Miller kid?" he asks, tone sober and quiet despite his breath still coming hard.

Sam nods. "Max."

Dean's voice drops to a dramatic whisper. "Is he here right now?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "No. Though he is more and more…" _…the closer we get._

"He, uh," Dean gestures abstractly. "Teach you that stuff?"

"Some of it," Sam pauses. "I think so."

"Right," Sam can't quite decipher his tone. "Good to hear you're all clear on it, then." Dean stands. "I'm gonna shower," he says.

Max takes Dean's place on the bed; Sam doesn't bother getting up.

"It still hurts," Sam says.

"It'll pass," Max looks down at him, but doesn't smile.

*

Max sits between them in the car, now, because it bugs the crap out of Dean when Sam keeps on turning around to talk to the back seat; at least this way there's not the edge of anxiousness that comes from having someone carry on half a conversation directly into your ear. Or argument, sometimes; though most times it's Max talking and Sam just listening; not much for Dean to hear anyhow.

The closer they get the more jittery Max seems to be; he talks faster, sharper, not stopping to let Sam be obnoxious or nitpick and then they hit the town's limits and he just stops.

"What?" Dean says at the long silence. "What's he saying?"

"Nothing," Sam says, frowning, then--"Wait… Left. Turn left here."

The back of Sam's neck feels hot and prickly and his lower back aches; the air inside the car turning wet and dry all of a sudden; smell like the air 'round a waterfall feels, like damp stone and urgent noise and even Dean seems affected by it, shifting uncomfortably and winding the window down. Max flickers to the back seat, to the rearview, back between them; they pass through the town and out the other side and Max directs them by proxy to an overgrown drive down a side road, the scrub opening out in front of them to reveal an old farmhouse, the second storey almost entirely missing, gutted by fire with charred splinters of it left stabbing up into sky.

Max's very solid, very still, and then he's not. "Where are we?" Dean asks.

"Home."

*

**2.**

"Fuck," Dean says when they round the corner to skid to a halt before a roadblock of police cars, lights flashing silently. "Fuck. She must have called the cops. Fucking _gratitude_, I tell you…"

Sam's not entirely sure what to say in response to that, not entirely sure he can even get words up out of his throat now, it's so tight-clenched against the bile. "What did you expect," he finds himself saying, and his voice sounds ragged and distant in his own ears.

"We saved her fucking _life_," and Dean spares a moment from rifling through the glove box to give him an indignant stare.

"You _killed_ her _son_."

"Step son," Dean corrects without looking at him and Sam rolls his head back against the seat, choked laughter spilling bitterly. The cops are in their armed-and-ready poses and Sam's head hurts and his teeth hurt and his gut feels like it's about to turn inside-out, following the lead of his chest.

"C'mon, Sammy," and Dean's voice is low and urgent, now, and when Sam looks back to him Dean's staring right at him. He's holding a pistol in one hand and a hijacked state police badge in the other, both below the dash, out of sight.

As if on cue, a megaphone-distorted voice ricochets back to them. "Step out of the car with your hands above your heads," it blips, grunts in feedback, blips back on. "Step out of the car _now_."

"This'll work," Dean's muttering, spinning the barrel of the pistol, peering through the empty chambers. "This'll work."

"Dean, don't," Sam says, a new urgency rising now, and a new teeth-shattering headache. "They're not going to believe a cop shot a kid because he was trying to kill his mom with his _mind_. Dean--"

"Have faith, little bro," Dean says, grinning at him, flexing his fingers into a firmer grip on the gun and flipping open the badge with the other hand.

"_Don't_," Sam says, the sharp-edged sound winding tight 'round his brain like a garrotte, and Dean shoves out of the car too fast. It's too bright and painful, then, and Sam doesn't even hear the gunshots.

*

**3\. **

They live in a trailer and it's small but then so is Dean, and at least even if the outdoors change the indoors stay the same no matter where they go. He doesn't make friends easily but tries to consider it a small mercy; if he doesn't actually _like_ anyone it's not like he's going to hate leaving them, is he?

Anyway, he and Dad are a team, they don't need anyone else. No one else in the world but them, they can be everything to each other.

Dad's drawn to dangerous things but the weak ones have always pulled Dean in like filings to a magnet. He's missed so much school in those between-times that all the kids around him are smaller and it makes him feel more out of place, huge and gangly, over-grown amongst all the frail bodies and round faces. He's sure he's never been that small, himself, but Dad seems to get bigger even as Dean does like nothing really ever changes.

There's this kid in Dean's class and he seems smaller even that the others, thinner, without that rounded-out baby fatness, and some of the other kids use this as an excuse to beat on him, something that makes Dean's neck itch even as he turns away from it. _Choose your battles_, Dad says to him, _no use fighting when neither of them's your side_, but even then Dean feels kinda sick when the kid comes into class one day and he's moving oddly, favouring one side, stiff like Dad was that one time he came in late and made it only as far as the bed before he dropped, Dean peeling away his shredded flannel shirt to find the blood underneath.

"Max," the teacher says, and the kid flinches a little and Dean grits his teeth. "You're late."

"Sorry," the kid mutters, and the teacher says something about a note from home, and Max moves to his seat, somewhere behind Dean.

Dean finds the kid at recess, loitering out behind the bleachers somewhere, where the students aren't really allowed to go. There're some older students there, sitting up high; kids Dean's age, just coming into the nubbly-breast and elongated-shins stage of puberty, and he doesn't look at them as he walks alongside and behind. The kid's not doing much, just standing there, one hand raised with fingernails idly shredding at the treated timber of the bleachers' supports, and he turns his body away tensely when Dean approaches.

"Hey," Dean says, and the kid doesn't answer. "I'm Dean."

"Max," the kid mumbles, not ceasing his dogged stripping of the timber. He's holding his other arm still and straight against his side, and Dean frowns a little.

"Are you okay?" Dean asks, and Max tenses incrementally, nods his head once, quick, and doesn't look up. "I, uh…" he's no good at this. Not much practice, so no wonder. "I'm kinda new. You wanna check out the woods out North of town? They're right near the trailer park, look kinda cool, I thought…"

"That's kid's stuff," Max says, and his voice is sharp and a little sullen. "Ghost stories. Only _babies_ go there, everyone's already been by the time they're at least _nine_." Which is probably about as old as Max is, though with his mouth twisted and lip stuck out like that, Dean's torn between gauging him as a few years older or a couple younger. Max's eyes flick up, then down again. "Besides," he says, sounding slightly mollified at Dean's lack of response. "I have to go straight home after school. I'm not allowed to go--" he gestures vaguely. "--To go out."

"Okay," Dean says.

*

Three weeks later Max misses a day of school, a Thursday, and on the Friday when he shows up he looks even smaller in contrast to the ungainly white cast sleeving his forearm. His eyes and mouth look red, stained, and he looks away as he walks to his seat, refusing to meet Dean's eyes.

At lunch Dean tracks him down again; beneath the bleachers this time, too-loud voices of the kids above jaggering through the slits between the slats, cutting into the shadow. Dean's fingers slip feather-light across the surface of the cast, the plaster rough and surprisingly warm, and Max's breath shudders. Dean keeps his eyes down, not looking at Max's face because he knows Max doesn't want him to, doesn't want him to see the twist of his mouth or the tears, and Dean drops his hand away, fingernails digging into his own palm.

"Come on," he says at last, voice rough-edged. "This is stupid. Lets just go. No one will notice." He looks at Max and the other boy's eyes gleam in the shadows.

Max swallows roughly, and then nods, the motion jerky.

It's strange bringing someone else into the trailer; gives Dean an odd sense of gentleness, carefulness, like he's hyper-aware of everything in it and around them and has to be extra-careful not to damage anything. Max comes slowly up the steps behind him, cast still ungainly and too-heavy and cradled with his free arm as he looks around with wide eyes.

"That's my Dad's stuff," Dean says, nodding at the wallpapering of clippings and sketches and scribbled notes over the upper half of the trailer. "I wouldn't touch them if I were you," and Max nods solemnly.

Dean flings himself up onto his bed, bouncing a little for show, knowing exactly how much give there is in the stolid mattress. "This is my bed," he says, and pats the space next to him. Max crawls up, half-lies back, looks around at the almost-enclosed alcove it's tucked into, ceiling curving up and away from it. "I'm almost too big for it. Dad says we'll have to renovate when I have another growth spurt."

"Is that you?" Max says. He's looking at a photo with its corner tucked under a loose edge of wallpaper, at eye-level near the head of Dean's bed.

"Yep. You can touch it if you want."

Max takes the photo, reaching over the broken arm to take it with the fingers of the whole one, holding it carefully in his lap.

"That's my brother," Dean says, and Max doesn't ask, doesn't look up. "He died, when he was just a baby," Dean continues. "He and my Mom, in a fire."

Max's eyes are huge, solemn. "Do you miss them?"

Dean shrugs, but there's something tangling its fingers at the base of his throat. "Sometimes. I don't really remember."

"I miss my Mom," Max says. "And I don't remember her at all, but I wish I did," his eyes tighten in a frown, the limp fingers at the end of the cast curling briefly before releasing. "I wish I remembered what happened."

They both startle at the sudden boot-stomps on the steps, then the door shudders ajar and Dean's Dad steps inside. The trailer always seems to get a bit smaller when he comes in, his solid body always hunching as if it has to in order to fit into the curved line of the roof and all the alcoves.

"Dean," he says, and frowns, blinking a couple of times like he's trying to remember. "Shouldn't you be at school?"

"Max--" Dean starts, then glances to where Max is trying to appear at least three times smaller on the bed next to him. "_I_ wasn't feeling well," Dean corrects himself.

"I see," Dad says, and comes to them in two easy strides, his huge hand pressing against Dean's forehead, palm rough and dry, before sliding back for a token hair-ruffle. "Don't feel feverish to me."

"I'm feeling much better now," Dean says somberly, and Dad raises an eyebrow, but nods.

"Max, is it?" he says, turning to look at Max, and he holds out his hand. Max hesitates, looking slightly terrified, then slightly relieved as his own hand is given a brief shake. "Your parents know where you are, Max?" Max shakes his head. "Come on, I'll give you a ride home. Dean, you wait here."

"But--"

"You _wait here_."

"Yessir."

*

Dean's still holding the photo when Dad gets back, the sound of his boots on the steps the most familiar thing in Dean's world.

"Dean," Dad says, and the bed hardly dips at all when he sits down on the edge of it. "I don't want you going over to Max's house, you hear me?"

Dean knows what this is about, wants to pretend otherwise, knows Dad wants to too. Dad wants him to just _understand_ so it'll all be all right, so they can just keep going, keep living, keep moving. "But Dad--"

"Dean--"

"Max _needs_ me, and he's not _allowed_ out after school, so how else am I--"

"_Dean_." The volume of his voice hasn't risen, but Dean knows that tone, and it's the one that requires answering with a _sir_. Dean clamps his jaw shut obstinately, turns his face away, then clenches his fist as Dad rests a hand on his shoulder.

"It's not _fair_," he grits. "You help people _all the time_, why can't we help Max?"

"It's different," Dad says, voice a little sad, but mostly just matter-of-fact, like he doesn't actually have to _convince_ Dean of anything; it just _is_. "These are people."

"It's _not_ different," Dean's on the edge of shouting. "They're _hurting_ him, and he can't stop it, and his step mom does nothing, and you could just--"

"Dean, it's not--"

"We could take him with us."

Dad's very still, and his hand on Dean's shoulder is motionless. Dean turns over so he's fully on his back, able to stare imploringly right into Dad's face.

"It's not going to happen, Dean."

"But--"

"You already have a brother." Dad surges to his feet, turning away and stomping back to his side of the trailer, where the thin blanket's rumpled over the longer bed, and hauls a sports bag from the storage space beneath. Dean swallows hard around the stone that's lodged in his throat. The trailer feels huge, the world around it bigger still, and Dean's trapped and alone with Dad's back turned to him, and he wants to scream and pound the mattress with his fist and tear up the photograph until both faces are unrecognizable.

"We're leaving tomorrow," Dad says, pulling a handgun out from where it was tucked into his pants, tipping the bullets out and peering through the empty chambers before dropping it into the bag; not turning around. Dean closes his eyes against the tears and turns away.

*

**4.**

Sam wakes up, and the last shreds of the dream wisp away like smoke. His nostrils flare with the sudden intake of stale air and his eyes feel sensitive, singed, as he blinks them rapidly. It's not quite full daylight yet; the light coming in 'round the thin curtains that early dawn kinda dirty, but there's no way he's getting back to sleep now.

Coffee makes him more jittery than focused; and even though he's early to class he's startled at how quickly the time passes and it's over, lecturer thumbing off the microphone and bodies rapidly rising around him, chairs creaking and slamming. It's not worth getting up to wait for the crowds to clear while standing, so he takes his time closing the lecture pad, capping his unused pen.

He's missed the class changeover rush by the time he comes out of the building; the steps are clear, thick green lawn ahead peppered with only a few students.

"Hey," There's a kid standing at the foot of the steps, looking up at him, body angled side-on, and Sam blinks. "You get much of that?" The kid squints up at him, the angle of his head dropping gradually to meet Sam's wary progress to the foot of the steps. It's still tilted up when Sam reaches gravel; the kid's at least a head shorter, eyes kinda big even when they're slitted, hair kind of alarmed-looking and a chewed, nervous mouth.

"I didn't take any notes, if that's what you're asking," because he has to give an answer, otherwise it would be rude, but he's not sure yet if the kid's being polite here anyhow; loitering around to take advantage of someone who'd gone to a lecture he probably hadn't even bothered with. "I don't even remember seeing you in there," Sam continues. He knows he's scowling, doesn't really care.

The kid's mouth edges up a bit. "Oh, I was there. I just started. Probably haven't seen me around yet." He's seemingly unaffected by Sam's less-than-friendly demeanor; both of them ignoring the fact that they were, in fact, two among hundreds of students that had just filled the theatre. And not ignoring, but not bringing up the fact that this kid seems to have stuck around waiting for _Sam_, out of all those hundreds, to emerge. "I'm Max, by the way." The kid sticks out the hand that isn't holding his notebook loosely against his hip. Sam takes it briefly; it's clammy and the nails are ragged against his skin. "I was wondering… Are you free? I could use some pointers for catching up with this class."

He's already sized the kid up but he does it again, makes it more obvious; defense-tactics on autopilot even as he's arguing with himself whether to tell the kid there's no-freaking-way, or whether maybe having some actual contact with another person might be a better idea. The kid isn't fazed, though, and in the end that in itself is enough to tip the balance; Sam gets a kind of fierce sense of challenge. If scowling isn't quite enough to scare the kid off, at least it'll be some entertainment to find out what will.

"Sure," he says, and Max doesn't-quite grin, almost as if he's hiding the fact that he's pleased from Sam. As if he's pleased that he was _right_, as opposed to being pleased that Sam has said yes. Sam scowls.

*

The third time Sam sees Max there's something weird about him; though not something _different_; and then it takes a few beats for Sam to figure out that _that's_ what's bugging him. Max is wearing the same clothes he wore the first two times Sam saw him, carrying the same notebook. He doesn't look _dirty_, though -- not homeless.

"Dude," Max says, smirking a little and sizing him up, and Sam's frown deepens. "You look like shit."

"Slept bad," Sam mutters, and pays for his coffee. Max follows him to a booth, slapping his dog-eared notebook down next to him. He cradles the cardboard coffee cup loosely between his hands and leans forward on his elbows, peering into Sam's face. "Lady friend?"

Sam smirks, feeling how twisted the expression is without even having to see it, thinking of Jess. "No, no lady friend."

"Bad dreams?"

Sam looks up, and Max's still looking at him, nothing casual about it, staring right into his face. Sam dips his head; his hair dropping down to hide the outside world from his eyes and vice versa. "Yeah," he says, curling his wrist to bring his coffee cup in closer to the edge of the table. "Something like that." His head hurts, like the images from the dream have cut through into his brain, as if the blood's leaking through not just metaphorically.

"Family?"

Sam lifts of his head to look at Max again, the movement slow and controlled but Max's expression hasn't changed; still intent, and intense but calm at the same time, calculating.

Sam sips his coffee. "What about them?"

"You dream about them?"

"Sometimes." Sam grits his teeth, stops himself from gripping the flimsy cup til it's crushed. "What is this, a psychoanalysis? Are you going to ask me about my relationship with my mother, next?"

"Tell me about your mom," Max says, not missing a beat, and next thing Sam knows he's standing, Max's head tilted up again, not breaking the eye contact.

"I don't have a mom," Sam says, and is somewhat surprised at how quiet his voice has got, how clear it still is. "She's dead." And he leaves.

*

He wakes up to a pounding that's out of synch with his nightmare, and when he stumbles to the door Max is there, farcical apology pasted on his features, slipping in under Sam's arm before Sam has even processed his presence.

"Sorry, about before," Max says, sitting on the edge of Sam's recently-vacated bed; and Sam's not even sure what time it is, his limbs still shaking, sweat still cooling in his lower back. "My mom," and Max is looking down for a change, not up into Sam's face. "She died too, when I was a kid." He looks up. "She died in my nursery. There was a fire." And Sam's still shaking now, but it's not from the dream, he folds his arms over his chest, turns away as if casually; though there's not really anything casual about turning your back on a guest to face a wall. But Sam doesn't really care about that right now. "You dream about your mom?"

"My dad," and somehow it's easier to talk when he doesn't have to look at Max, can just close his eyes behind his hair and imagine someone else sitting there, maybe.

"What's he like?" Max asks.

_He's a bastard,_ Sam wants to say, but can't seem to chew the words past his teeth, and Max takes his silence for refusal to answer, continues to talk.

"My dad kinda freaked out after my mom died. I was too young to remember what it was like before, but… I think he kinda blamed me. We were never close."

"You're not… stalking me, are you?" The half-joke comes out coarse and somewhat bitter in his mouth, and he's turned to face Max and Max is still looking at him, his smile a little delayed.

"Like I said, he went a bit crazy after it happened. Needed someone to blame. Had to find out who did it."

"Arson?" Sam frowns, and Max's expression is dark.

"Something like that." His smile's wry again, then, and Sam relaxes a little as Max plucks at the bed sheets. When he speaks again his voice is quieter, but Sam's closer, so it doesn't matter so much. "You dream about your dad a lot?"

"Only recently." Sam's not willing to offer much; he's not quite sure what he's doing here in the first place, not sure what the hell this kid's doing here, but his head's hurting less than it has so far this day, so he's willing to run with it.

"In the last couple months?"

"Yeah," Sam looks up from his contemplation of the carpet almost involuntarily. "How did you--?"

Max's staring at him now, focused, but not too intense, almost like he doesn't want to scare Sam off. "Me too. Since he went missing."

"You're dad's _missing_? Have you--"

"He knows where he is… I just… _I_ don't know where he is. And I can't tell, not properly, but if you--"

Max stops, licks his lips. "Your dad," he says. "In your dreams, is he…"

"They're no fun," Sam says, only half-lying. "But not surprising, if you've done psych 101." His headache's coming back, like someone's trying to drive a nail in through the back of his skull, right through to the center of his brain.

"Sam," Max is saying, and Sam realizes he's sitting on the bed, now, hand over his eyes like blocking out the meager light is going to make any difference. Max is right there, hovering close, and Sam can abruptly smell the residue of unfamiliar shaving cream on Max's skin; it almost makes him retch. Then the room skitters and slides and the pain flashes bright.

*

The first thing he sees in the half-light when he wakes up is a tufted head leaning against the edge of his bed, and his heart lurches and the room lurches as he sits up, then it's like he's dunked out of hot water into cold when the head turns and he sees who it is.

"What are you doing here?" He grates, and Max turns fully, standing over the bed. The covers are twisted, Sam lying on top of them, and he continues the swing of his legs round to push himself up face to face but gets only half-way before he finds himself sitting again, abruptly, as if he's been shoved.

"What did you see?" Max says, and his voice is intense, no feigned nonchalance this time.

_Blood,_ Sam thinks. _Dean. Dad._

"What are you talking about?" it's closer to a growl, and Max's eyes narrow, backing off a step or two as Sam rises more measuredly from the bed.

"I know," Max says, and it's obvious he's starting to feel threatened now, _at long last_, Sam thinks with a degree of amused bitterness. "I know you saw something, something to do with your father, or my father, if you just _tell_ me--"

"Look," Sam's voice is low. "I don't know why you decided to pick me for your crazy of the week, but I think--" and yeah, it's probably safer now that he step away from this strange kid who he doesn't really know at _all_, get as close to the door as possible "--It's far past time you left, buddy."

The door handle's ripped out of his grasp and slammed so hard his ears are left ringing, and then all his concentration's taken up with trying to get air into his lungs, it having been driven out of him by the force of being slammed back against the wall. Max stands motionless, still on the other side of the room.

"Just tell me," he says. "Tell me what you saw, and I'll let you go."

Sam gasps in a breath, and whatever it is holding him eases a little, allowing his heart to pound out harder, as if that were possible. "Who--" he says, and the grip tightens again.

"_Tell me_."

"My father," Sam chokes out. _Dean._ "Alone. In the garage. The shop." _Dean's hands; blood._ He squeezes his eyes shut fiercely, as if that can stop the images burnt into his mind. "Dead." He slumps abruptly against the wall and decides this time that it's probably in his best interests _not_ to try and move again.

"You're sure it was him," Max says, finally wavering, and Sam nods once, fierce.

"What--" Sam starts again, after the silence has lasted long enough for him to get his breath back, heart still racing. "Who are you?"

The smile's back, and the stare. "I told you already."

*

Max paces like he's waiting for something; for long enough that Sam can't help but relax just a little, letting his legs slide down til they're stretched out along the floor. His roomie rattles the door and calls him a bitch when it doesn't open; Max doesn't pause and Sam doesn't try and open it again. Max talks a little, and Sam listens. He figures it's just another fucked-up thing to happen in a fucked-up life, one that he's still not connected to, not to anything around him, even though it's his own. Max, at least, seems to hold certainty in some things.

And then Sam's cell rings.

"It's my brother," he says when he has it in his hand, display glowing urgently, and Max doesn't stop him from answering it.

"Sammy," Dean's voice is rough, like heavy pebbles rolling against each other, the sound reverberating in Sam's chest even through the tinny connection. "Sam. You can come home now."

Sam swallows hard at hearing it like that, like a stopper pulled out after he's imagined every other way of the pressure easing around it but this. "Dean, I--"

Max is staring at him and he's staring right back, though he knows the sound of Dean's rough breathing will seem closer if he closes his eyes.

"He's dead, Sam. You can come home now."

Max steps closer, his eyes huge. "Dean, I can't, I--" The line goes dead and Sam can't take a breath again; his fingers are wrapped tight around the slick plastic of the cell phone and then his sharp breath in, like a rasp through his throat, is muffled by the crash and clatter as a stack of books on his desk topple violently.

Max smiles. "I never had a brother," he says, and Sam can't tell if he's trying to be kind or sarcastic. Figures maybe there isn't a difference, for Max. "Guess we're not just the same after all."

"We're not the same _at all_," Sam spits, and hauls an overnight bag from beneath his bed.

*

There's plenty of time to talk; Max's jalopy can only handle a few hours hard-burn at a time, and it's considerably longer than that from California to Kansas via road. The things Max has to say are easier to believe when Sam's not trying to anchor them to the banal surrounds of campus; Max moves things around in the car and it's not that different from the movement of the car on the road, and the way Sam's moving within it.

Dean's cell goes straight to voicemail and Sam makes sure he doesn't sleep. The pain in his skull is a constant, but feels less like damage and more like growing pains; like his body's making room for something new, not alerting him to something missing, now.

Then Sam gets lost just within state lines, the pain rising like a wave of white light; when the world rights itself again the jalopy's in a ditch, one of Max's hands gripped painfully in his hair and the other vice-like on his jaw, gripping and shaking in a way that isn't exactly helping.

_Dean._ "Drive," Sam grits, slapping his hands away and Max's back behind the wheel, swerving back onto asphalt, and Sam's not looking at the fences that had been bordering either side, now uprooted and flung flat into cornfield. _Dean._ "Faster."

*

**5.**

He stumbles at the foot of the stairs; a delayed realisation, _holy shit, the fucking sideboard, it fucking **moved**_, kicking in with a simultaneous arrow of pain threading through his skull, and then the pain's so hard and solid that the gunshot he hears when he's made it two steps across the landing is hard to separate from it; it's all hard, hot metal.

And then it's hard to separate anything, really, and his head doesn't really hurt that much any more because his entire being has become this solid mass of bright light and he's burning but he's not hot because there's nothing to combust, _he is fire_, not the brittle tinder (shrieking, glass shattering and gun overheating bullets trapped in melted metal, smell of burnt hair, and flesh) and he can only look up, only lick up, past the splatter of red that sizzles and turns black then white, then the screams stop and the only sound is the fire, is him, a low roar, one long breath in that never stops.

Dean's body is the last to burn but one.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/41419.html


End file.
